If it's good enough for the Winter Olympics ... Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

ONCE A GUNNER ...

Ashley Cole, ever the "stupid boy" Frank Pike to England's Brave and Loyal John Terry's Captain George Mainwaring, took his commanding officer's instruction to "man up" last week to ludicrous heights by "action manning up". He turned up to training fully tooled up and popped a cap, inadvertently we are assured, into another human being.

A day after misfiring from the spot against Everton, Cole is reported to have arrived at Cobham equipped with a .22 rifle, fitted with muzzle and nightscope, something the News of the World says was witnessed by a dozen members of staff. It is said that Cole was unaware the rifle was loaded when he took aim at Tom Cowan, a 21-year-old who was on a year's internship at Chelsea. "It ended up pointed at Tom just five feet away," a club source whispered to the paper. "The gun went off with a loud pop and Tom screamed as this lead pellet hit him in the side. It went through his clothing and into his flesh."

Cole was fined, told to apologise and faced a "dressing down". So, in short, if the NoW is to be believed: the England left-back took a gun into his workplace; no one thought to question him about it or, perish the thought, stop him; he aimed it at a student while "larking about"; shot him and had to be told to say sorry. His manager, Carlo Ancelotti, addressed the issue at a press conference today. "He's a good player, a fantastic player," he said. "Maybe he made a mistake in this situation [Maybe? - Fiver Ed] , but he remains a very good player and a great professional. He made a mistake. Who hasn't made a mistake in his life? Who?"

Somewhere the sound of Ian Curtis singing "And he showed up all the errors and mistakes, and said I've lost control again" can be heard. Meanwhile the Surrey Travis Bickle is free to play against Manchester United tomorrow and the Chelsea HR department is busily revising its work experience recruitment insurance premiums to South Compton levels.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

14 August 2006: "It's very exciting, looking ahead, to think what I might achieve. At 32 I'm still young. I think some people looked down on me when I became the youngest person to referee in the Premiership at 29. But I took up refereeing when I was 16, where some of the others waited until their mid-20s. I think my age helps with the players - I'm from their era, I know where they're coming from. And I think managers appreciate what I'm trying to do and how hard I'm working - they don't always agree with me but I've never felt that they don't respect me" - Mark Clattenburg ahead of his arrival as a top-flight referee.

28 February 2011: Wayne Rooney escapes punishment for blatantly elbowing Wigan's James McCarthy, referee Mark Clattenburg telling the FA he saw the incident and was satisfied he dealt with it appropriately at the time by awarding a free-kick. R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

GUNNED DOWN

So that's that then. Laurent Koscielny and Wojciech Szczesny prove that all the blu-tac-toed midfield pixies in the world are powerless in the face of good old rank defensive incompetence and, given the avowed purpose of Arsenal's Cup campaign - namely to break some perceived mental hoodoo about 'winning things' - it's season over for Arsene Wenger's men. If they lack the intestinal and cerebral fortitude to beat lowly Birmingham in England's second-best knockout competition, then how on earth can they be expected to do things like beat Barcelona in Big Cup. What? Oh.

Fortunately for the Gunners, the Fiver never bought into the idea that in order to win something big you have to win something little first. Was Colin Firth destined for an Oscar as soon as he bagged the 1975 Young Actor of the Year award for his portrayal of Villager No3 in the Grayshott and Haslemere Amateur Dramatics Society's production of Waiting For Godot: the musical? Was Ban Ki-moon's route to the top assured once the Helper of the Day award from a Eumseong County nursery was Sellotaped to the fridge back in 1947? Is the Fiver any less of a tea-time email having never so much won a round of rock-paper-scissors?

The answer to those rhetorical questions, if you're struggling to follow the Fiver's point, is no (apart from No3. To which the answer is yes). So Gooners can rest assured that, despite the short-term shock value of Koscielny and Szczesny's entry for Angus Deayton's Hilarious Football Bloopers 7 DVD (coming to a bargain bin near you soon), if they reach the summer potless once more that it'll be down, not to a trophy-famine fuelled win aversion, but to Not Being Quite Good Enough.

In the meantime, the rest of us can enjoy the fact that a team that wanted to win for the joy of winning, rather than win as a stepping stone on the way to winning something else, lifted the trophy. Birmingham's victory is also a victory for the sporadically-maligned Big 'Alex McLeish' Eck, who demonstrated just what can be achieved with a Stakhanovite spirit, clanger-free defenders, an inspired goalkeeper and a striker so big he messes with your sense of depth perception.

"Congratulations to Tony Hastings (Friday's Fiver letters) on getting the toy car he used to have as a kid into the James Bond collection in Lord Montague's motor museum at Beaulieu" - Murray Paul (and 1,056 others).

BITS AND BOBS

Louis Saha escaped unharmed after driving his Ferrari 458 into a fence off the A538 on Sunday night, just down the road from where Cristiano Ronaldo smashed his Ferrari in 2009.

It never rains dept: Arsenal have announced they made a loss after tax of £2.5m in the six months between last May and last November.

Macclesfield boss Gary Simpson has criticised his team for their role in the 22-man mass brawl at the end of the League Two defeat to Wycombe. "[The referee] chose three to send off but it could have been any one of the whole group," barked Simpson. "It detracted from what was a very good performance from us."

And Port Vale insist the bust-up between boss Jim Gannon and assistant Geoff Horsfield that prompted the pair to leave the team coach on the M6 en route to Aldershot "is being dealt with internally".

STILL WANT MORE?

Today's Football Weekly features guns, German sausage meat news and a dissection of Vincenzo Montella taking over at Roma. What's not to like?